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Attiya Ahmad is Georgetown University’s 2009-10 Center for International and Regional Studies Post-Doctoral Fellow. She recently completed her PhD in Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. Dr. Ahmad’s work brings together scholarship on Islamic studies, globalization, diaspora and migration studies, economic anthropology, and political economy.
Introduction to The Environment and the Middle East: New Approaches and New Actors , Volume II
The tumultuous political changes taking place across the region dominate the news — deservedly so. Yet, there are other changes taking place throughout the Middle East which, though less prominent, also merit attention. Indeed, the region has no shortage of creative and committed “change agents” who in ways great and small have taken meaningful steps to address the myriad challenges to the sustainability of the region’s physical environment. Volume II in this series offers snapshots of a small selection of the many efforts aimed at cultivating responsible environmental stewardship.
This article outlines the important role that can be played by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in helping to tackle environmental issues in the Middle East. Using the work of the Emirates Wildlife Society in association with the World Wild Fund for Nature (EWS-WWF) as an example, the article explores the challenges facing NGOs in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and recommends ways in which these obstacles can be overcome.
Civil Society and Community Mobilization in Afghanistan
Originally posted December 2009
Civil Society (CS) consists of various kinds of community-based, non-governmental movements that, without waiting for or requesting government orders or assistance, come together mainly to solve problems and effect change. CS actors in Afghanistan exist at the local, district, and national levels. They are engaged in resolving problems and in calling upon people to contribute to, or participate in, community-based activities.
Experts throughout the massive aid community in Afghanistan agree that education is vital for development. Education shapes the quality of productivity, products, and services. Education informs citizens of the roles that they must play so that good governance may thrive. Education molds the quality of leadership. Yet, despite the rhetoric, the education sector is perennially underfunded; typically, it receives scarcely 10% of what is provided to other sectors.
The Emerging Afghan Media: Beyond the Stereotyping of Women?
Originally posted December 2009
For the past 30 or more years, media content in Afghanistan mostly has been controlled by the central government and its supporters. During this period, as throughout the 20th century, the most important and widely available forms of media have been national radio and television. However, rural perspectives and the realities of rural life have been conspicuously absent from most media content. Moreover, because of traditionally rigid gender roles, Afghan women have had very limited or almost no access to media and information sources.
Women's Agency in Afghanistan: From Survivors to Agents of Change
Originally posted December 2009
Often, policy debates on the empowerment of women in Afghanistan are impaired by the historic backlashes against radical top-down reforms and women’s emancipation (e.g., unseating kings) or by the assumption that the male-dominated culture makes it nearly impossible to create space for the advancement of women’s rights. As a result, the effort to develop a cohesive strategy for enhancing women’s participation in the reconstruction agenda is hampered.
This Opinion first appeared on CNN.com on April 20, 2012
The six-point peace plan for Syria proposed by Kofi Annan is doomed to fail for one simple reason: Neither President Bashar al-Assad nor the government opposition is interested in making it work.
The NGO people drive around in big white cars, live in our cities’ best houses and receive high salaries, though most of them would be jobless in their own country. They come here for two, three hours, and we tell them what they need to hear. They express empathy with our difficult situation, and then they get back into their air-conditioned four wheel drives and race off leaving us behind in a cloud of dust. Often they are never seen again. —Farmers in rural Kunduz Province, 2006
